Travel Tuesday

We left Amsterdam at 13:00 (after leaving two of the boys behind because they missed the bus!) and travelled to St. Goar in Germany. St. Goar is a tiny little town on the Rhine river in the Rhine valley. By the time we got there it was dark so we couldn't see any of the castles around this area. We did see a meteor on the way there which was pretty cool, especially since it was Christmas eve. In Germany they celebrate Christmas eve rather than Christmas day like we do here.
We checked into our little hotel and then made our way down to the hotel pub to meet some new friends. Seeing as though St. Goar was so small, the whole Contiki group spent the night in the pub together. This was our first real chance to get to know everyone in the group. Because it was Christmas eve our Tour manager had decided to do a Secret Santa for us. We each had to get a small 5€ present in Amsterdam and then we put them all in a bag and picked something else out. That way everyone got a small present on Christmas. I got an Amsterdam snow globe, which is now standing next to my snow globe from London and is pretty cool.

The hotel we were staying in is a Contiki hotel, whenever Contiki comes through St. Goar, they book out the entire hotel for the group, because of this there is a Contiki tradition in this hotel. The hotel sells small bottles of shots - very similar to the Flugel shot we had on the canal cruise in Amsterdam - and there is a record for the group that has drank the most of these bottles. I think the record was 2250 - that works out to about 50 shots per person! All the groups that have been close to the records have their photos up on the wall of the pub. Our group didn't try for the record, but I think this might have been because we were all still new and hadn't made good friends yet. I'm pretty sure that if our trip had been the other way round and St. Goar was our second last night then we would definitely have tried to get that record - and probably have got pretty close!

We also encountered German duvets for the first time in St. Goar. They fold them in half and put them on the bed, it's very strange. I must admit that after the trip when wewent to Vienna we were rather happy to see the German duvets again!

The next morning we went to a beer stein shop and learnt about the steins they make in Germany - this shop makes and sells a special Contiki stein, two of the guys bought them. I really liked these ones but didn't have the money or weight allowance in my bag to buy one. We also went to a big Cuckoo clock shop where I bought some small Christmas decorations. After the Cuckoo shop we left St. Goar and headed to Munich...where a very unusual Christmas day/night was waiting for us!